Put my RSS feed on /their/ site.

May 24, 2005 5:31 AM

A number of other sites have asked me for help about putting my RSS feed on their site. Um. Help? more, as they say, inside.

So, about a dozen of websites in my community (final cut pro/apple pro apps self link) built of volunteers, all would like my RSS feed...and are coming to me for (HA) webcoding help. I'm an editor for pete's sake. The whole shebang (me, them, etc.) are all volunteers.

My 'dream' would be a piece of javascript that could be cut+pasted to their site that would fetch my feed (titles only...I don't know how to do that either!) and display it on their site.

I asked this question way back here...but it wasn't as turnkey as I needed - these guys are in the same boat I am...lack of resources.

Alternatively, is there a resource of people willing to help a volunteer group with advanced coding? Or the best way to hire someone for say, $50 to do this?

posted by filmgeek to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Not sure if it suits your needs, but I found this site helpful in adding RSS feeds to my site. From the Home page:

Build a Feed!
The tool below will help you format a feed's display with the information you want to use on your web site. All you need to enter is the URL for the RSS source, and select the desired options below.
posted by Otis at 6:03 AM on May 24, 2005

More here
posted by yerfatma at 6:36 AM on May 24, 2005

this depends entirely on how advanced the requirements are on the site that will be displaying the info.

if you want to do it with javascript so that the code is relatively portable, that could work, but it would take a little work to coax javascript into parsing an rss file in a relatively error-proof manner -- unless someone has already built something to do that.
posted by frufry at 7:16 AM on May 24, 2005

Maybe something like NewsGator would work? The consumer version is free, and according to their site they offer:

"Headlines – Want News Feed headlines on your Blog? You’ll love this."

I haven't tried it myself, but that sounds like what you're looking for.
posted by geeky at 7:43 AM on May 24, 2005

I've installed Feedsplitter with great success for a couple of clients who wanted to do this.

In general, it will take an RSS feed, and put out javascript that they can call to embed the headlines on their page.

If you want to do much customization of the look and feel, you'll probably want to install it (it's an open-source PHP script) on a server somewhere.

If the default is good enough, and you are willing to depend on a 3rd party service, I think you are allowed to just call it directly from the site above, as long as your volume is low enough (they used to allow this, at least).
posted by nonliteral at 8:39 AM on May 24, 2005

I think the RSS piece is a red herring. It conveys the general idea, but it's clearly limiting people's imagination about the proper implementation.

It sounds like it would be enough to create a very basic HTML template in MT and add it to the templates, then create a bit of HTML the can paste into their pages that will display the HTML from your server in an IFRAME on their front page. I believe that the ambitious could even override some styles to get things to match their site style a little better.
posted by Good Brain at 8:41 AM on May 24, 2005

I think the RSS piece is a red herring. It conveys the general idea, but it's clearly limiting people's imagination about the proper implementation.

Essentially, you're right. The IFrame idea might just be the simplest in this case, but the RSS feed is ultimately more flexible. It sounds like most of the people who would be using this module aren't necessarily too tech-savvy, but should someone want to do something more fancy, their options would be somewhat limited with a Html page in an IFrame.

Either way works, though...
posted by frufry at 9:25 AM on May 24, 2005

True, frufry, but the site in question already has an RSS 2.0 feed, which would seem to be all a more sophisticated site owner would want. An RSS 1.0 feed is also in place, and i'd guess that if an Atom feed isn't already in place, it would be easy enough to get MT to spit one out.
posted by Good Brain at 9:51 AM on May 24, 2005

"Or the best way to hire someone for say, $50 to do this?" I use rentacoder a lot.
posted by arse_hat at 10:11 AM on May 24, 2005

"My 'dream' would be a piece of javascript that could be cut+pasted to their site that would fetch my feed (titles only...I don't know how to do that either!) and display it on their site."

RSS Digest does this.
posted by adamkempa at 10:27 AM on May 24, 2005

Guys, all of that is great!

Is there a way to block a site to prevent them from doing this to my site?
posted by filmgeek at 12:49 PM on May 24, 2005

Is there a way to block a site to prevent them from doing this to my site?

Basically, no. That would be the same as blocking any particular html page. It's all public data.
You could have valid sites pass in some kind of credentials, but then things are getting a lot more complicated.
posted by frufry at 1:56 PM on May 24, 2005